Shamir, Israel’s terrorist turned PM, dies at 96

THE former Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Shamir, who waged a terrorist campaign against the British to secure his country’s independence, has died at the age of 96 after a long illness.

Binyamin Netanyahu, the current prime minister, who heads Shamir’s right-wing Likud party, paid tribute to the former leader, saying he “was a paragon of loyalty to the land of Israel and the eternal values of the Jewish people”.

Throughout his two terms as premier from 1983-4 and 1986-1992, Shamir remained true to his belief that Israel must never yield an inch of territory nor trust an Arab regime.

But among his greatest achievements was an act of restraint. When Shamir was prime minister during the first Gulf war in 1991 he intervened to stop…